Introduction

In this opening chapter, we outline the dual contribution of this book, designed simultaneously to speak to scholars of nonreligion and academics, policy makers and activists interested in how to garner interest in what we, following others, call world repairing work: the work of bringing people together across differences and of making the world liveable for human and other-than-human beings. The last two decades have seen a groundswell of research into nonreligion. But this has been focused almost exclusively on the “non” part of nonreligion. Instead, our contribution is to focus on the positive content of nonreligious imaginaries as they are lived out in both extraordinary and everyday practices of world repairing. We argue that this work is vital for those seeking to foster world repairing work because it tells us something about the way the world is already imagined by those on the frontline and, in so doing, speaks to the distance and direction of ideational travel that is required for more widespread social and political transformation.